MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Message in a Bottle

James Durney

A recent call from Peter Doyle and Mary Ellen Mooney, set me on a task to find out what was behind the discovery of a message in a bottle. Inside a green bottle discovered under the Naas Town Hall floorboards by former resident, Peter Doyle, was a piece of cardboard with the names of John Mahon and Liam Gaul and the date 11th September 1941. Long before the Coliseum Cinema opened in 1940 Naas cinemagoers watched their movies in the Town Hall. Moving pictures, or cinema, came to Naas as early as 1902, and were first shown in the Town Hall. This was the era of silent movies and background music was provided by an orchestra, until the first ‘talkie’ in 1927. Chris Sylvester from the Curragh ran the Town Hall Cinema from 1929 to 1942 and the projectionist for most of that time was John Mahon.

John was born at Main Street Naas in 1917 to Terence Mahon, grocer, and Bridget Mahon nee McCormack. The McCormack family had a public house at 32 North Main Street. Liam Gaul was born in 1926 at Rathasker Road, Naas, so he would have been John Mahon’s youthful assistant. John Mahon trained as a projectionist in the Town Hall and worked there for seven years. The Coliseum opened on 15 February 1940 with seating for 750 and ultra-modern sound. John Mahon became the projectionist at the Coliseum from shortly after its opening until his retirement in the 1980s. The Town Hall Cinema kept in the competition but in 1942 had to bow to the advance of modernism and closed.

However, on the date recorded in the message the Town Hall cinema had the most popular movie, showing ‘Music in my Heart,’ a 1940 Hollywood romantic musical starring Tony Martin and Rita Hayworth, while the Coliseum had Jimmy O’Dea in ‘Penny Paradise,’ a British comedy released two years earlier. Possibly this was the last day John Mahon and Liam Gaul worked at the Town Hall Cinema and marked the occasion by writing their names and the date and secreting the bottle under the floorboards.

In world news, not much was happening on 11 September 1941, even though this was the third year of the world at war. In Des Moines, Iowa, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, made a speech on behalf of the America First Committee, which included remarks that would be instantly controversial: ‘The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt administration.’ Lindbergh said he admired the British and Jewish races, but claimed that the Jews’ ‘greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government’.

John Mahon and Liam Gaul’s message in a bottle lay undiscovered for decades, long after both had passed away. John Mahon retired after a lengthy career with the Coliseum Cinema and passed away in August 1983. Liam Gaul was my mother’s first cousin, hence the call from Peter and Mary Ellen regarding the bottle. As the last male with the Gaul name Liam left Naas to work in Dublin, where he married, raised a family, and ran a successful business, Shelton Stores, in Kimmage. He returned to Naas regularly to attend the Punchestown Race Festival. Liam Gaul died in 1991 and was buried in St. Corban’s Cemetery, Naas.